It is well known that the proliferation of transfer of fund instruments, such as checks, drafts, credit card receipts and the like have resulted in the development of computerized equipment which automatically handles, sorts, and processes these instruments and the information thereon. In such applications, the transfer of fund instruments are initially encoded with machine readable indicia, one common form being referred to as Magnetic Ink Character Recognition, or MICR, data, corresponding to the information relevant to such instruments. The computerized equipment then automatically scans the instruments, "reads" the MICR data, and processes the documents and data in response thereto.
Although this development has been instrumental in increasing the speed and efficiency of handling and processing commercial documents, it has not been free of difficulties. For example, many commercial instruments, such as checks, are often defaced, mutilated, improperly encoded, or the MICR data is otherwise rendered unsuitable for processing, and the instruments will consequently be rejected by the automatic processing equipment. To overcome such problem, various techniques have been devised for modifying or "correcting" the check to enable its automatic processing, many of which being directed to the attachment or association of an auxiliary encodable sheet or band with the check, the auxiliary encodable band providing an additional area or surface for receiving new encoded indicia to replace or supplement the indicia on the check.